You are more than entitled not to know what the word 'performative' means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does ...not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thin...king, active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

[A trip to France] will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people and manners.... My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divi...ne institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

A government deriving its energy from the will of the society, and operating, by the reason of its measures, on the understanding ...and interest of the society ... is the government for which philosophy has been searching and humanity been fighting from the most remote ages ... which it is the glory of America to have invented, and her unrivalled happiness to possess.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »